Reuters: Hot Stocks: Miners lead recovery on Britain's FTSE after morning falls

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Miners lead recovery on Britain's FTSE after morning falls Jun 13th 2013, 16:23 Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:23pm EDT * FTSE gains 0.1 percent, reversing earlier losses * Index holds above important technical levels around 6,200 * Miners bounce off of 4 year lows * RBS the top faller after CEO announces departure By Alistair Smout LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) - British shares edged higher on Thursday, recovering from steep early losses after holding at a key technical level and seeing a recovery in the downtrodden mining sector. The FTSE 100 closed up 5.18 points, or 0.1 percent, at 6,304.63, having fallen as low as 6,205.71 after a 6.4 percent slide on the Japanes Nikkei set a weak tone for the morning session. "Following the Asian markets, we were always going to open negatively... but we came close to the 200 day moving average (at 6,143.12), and a failure to break that has helped calm the fear factor," Alastair McCaig, market analyst at IG Index, said. "A dip even below the 6,200 level would've been pessimistic, but the fact that we didn't do that has seen people entering the market here." Miners rose 1.8 percent, the top sectoral gainers, after bouncing off four year lows. The sector is down 20.3 percent on the year but regained some traction as heavily hit emerging market currencies slowly recovered, benefitting from central bank support, such as an unexpected rate rise in Indonesia. "Some of the emerging market currencies streadied this morning, benefitting from central bank intervention like in Indonesia, and and that's helped the miners, and in turn the market, a bit higher," Andy Ash, head of sales at Monument Securities, said. "The FTSE is likely to churn about for now, however, and we may not get a clear direction until the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting next week." No changes are expected to the U.S. central bank's monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds when its policy-setting committee meets June 18-19, even though fears that the level of buying is to be reduced have hit markets in recent weeks. The FTSE pared losses after U.S. data showed retail sales and jobless claims showed resilience in the economy, although it is unlikely the Fed will reduce stimulus soon as manufacturing is struggling. "The U.S. data was good, and it's helped drag sentiment higher... we've seen enough negativity around quantitative easing anyway for people to take improvement in the economy at face value this time," McCaig said. Royal Bank of Scotland was the top faller, down 3.3 percent after the surprise exit of Chief Executive Stephen Hester, which investors said was a big loss. They added that there was no obvious successor for him. (editing by Ron Askew) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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